Likely, your answer will be in line with a curious and often cited survey result in which 88 percent of respondents judged their driving as “above average.” Similar outcomes are obtained for self-evaluations of IQ, managerial ability and originality. Obviously, that cannot be correct if we use these categorical rather than numerical measures.

This question of how we “see ourselves” is intriguing to economists because it likely impacts our economic decision making whether it’s based on overconfidence or not.

Recent research by economists actually pointed out that the large above-average estimate could make sense even if there is a 50-50 split between good and bad drivers. (Available at tinyurl.com/42jyy74.)

The reasoning is we may judge “good driving” on outcomes (such as wrecks) and many bad drivers (we have all seen them) often manage to barely escape wrecks. Those drivers will then put themselves in the above-average category because they got away unscathed.

As the authors put it: “Thus, the population of drivers seems overconfident on the whole. However, rather than being overconfident, which implies some error in their judgments, they are simply using all the information available to them in the best possible manner.”

A team of economists from Stanford University, Univeristy of California San Diego and Iowa State University set out to study how we respond to negative and positive feedback. Their published results paint an intriguing picture of how we deal with peer responses (tinyurl.com/3rhp8vn).

In a carefully designed study that included 656 subjects and various control-group scenarios, the researchers find strong evidence of “self-serving bias.”

They conclude: “Strikingly, even subjects who received two positive and two negative signals — and thus learned nothing — ended up significantly moreconfident than they began.”

How to use such results is another question. For instance, it is likely we would want to encourage that type of behavioral response in inventors and entrepreneurs (but not in nuclear power plant operators or the proverbial bad drivers).

This research might also have an impact on how we go about motivating learning.

This week, I participated in a discussion with some of this year’s winners of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.

The group in question consisted of mainly mathematics teachers in elementary schools from across the country. It was inspiring to meet such wonderful teachers who are role models in their pursuit of excellence in the classroom, often in areas that serve children from low-income backgrounds or with difficult family environments.

One topic that was featured prominently in our discussion (apart from the importance of parent engagement, but that is for another column) was research results regarding subtle feedback that discourages young girls from being successful in mathematics and science courses.

The paper cited above also said “less confident subjects are causally more likely to be averse” to receiving feedback about their ability. So, perhaps we need to concentrate on instilling confidence first before carefully providing honest assessments while encouraging improvement.

After all, what we would really like to achieve is our children to be (on average) above average in science, engineering and math compared with other industrialized nations.

That would really give us confidence — and put our country in the driver’s seat — for a bright future.

Dr. Michael Reksulak teaches economics and public finance in Georgia Southern University’s College of Business Administration. He can be reached by email at mreksula@georgiasouthern.edu.